The Impact of Autistic Traits on Self-Recognition of Body Movements

Despite the sparse visual information and paucity of self-identifying cues provided by point-light stimuli, as well as a dearth of experience in seeing our own-body movements, people can identify themselves solely based on the kinematics of body movements. The present study found converging evidence...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Joseph M. Burling, Akila Kadambi, Tabitha Safari, Hongjing Lu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-01-01
Series:Frontiers in Psychology
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02687/full
Description
Summary:Despite the sparse visual information and paucity of self-identifying cues provided by point-light stimuli, as well as a dearth of experience in seeing our own-body movements, people can identify themselves solely based on the kinematics of body movements. The present study found converging evidence of this remarkable ability using a broad range of actions with whole-body movements. In addition, we found that individuals with a high degree of autistic traits showed worse performance in identifying own-body movements, particularly for simple actions. A Bayesian analysis showed that action complexity modulates the relationship between autistic traits and self-recognition performance. These findings reveal the impact of autistic traits on the ability to represent and recognize own-body movements.
ISSN:1664-1078